Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is an issue of the language's qualities if it does not really make it easier to reason about code. I find reason to question the simplicity of something which is widely acknowledged to take a lot of time to learn, to be mind-bending, and which seems to be impossible to explain simply - without deep theoretical background, academic citations or oversimplifications acknowledged as misleading. I think it would be mat…
Simple does not imply easy. As an extreme example, a unicycle is simpler than a bicycle--fewer components, simpler structure, no gearing--but also more difficult to learn. Really, I'll just have to point you to the "Simple Made Easy" talk again. The core point being that there's a difference between something being "simple" and something being "easy", and we should generally strive for the former rather than the latt…
It seems beautiful, enlightening and wrong.
It might be described as a powerful statement of software idealism. Essentially, start simple and stay there, the problems, the mess, the mythical-man-months, etc all come because the developers refused the effort needed for simple and impatiently descended into the swamp of complexity.
I too, love starting simple and usually intend to stay there.
But the problem I would suggest, is the complexity will build up and simplity-as-the-simple-methods you've learned, simplity-as-such, can't fight this build-up. If being simple COULD put an end to complex situations, you wouldn't have to START simple, you could use simplicity to "drain the swamp of the complex". But every methodology more or less says that you have to be on the top of its mountain and to stay there (except original OO and we know how well that worked).
My contention is that this "mountain dwelling" is only possible at times, in some domains, in some organizations, etc. Humans can, at times, carve simplicity out of the swamp of complexity. But it isn't easy and it isn't a product of any fixed set of simple tools we human have come up with so-far.
Mr. Hickey's viewpoint might be useful for selling simplicity and I would be willing to use it if I thought simplicity would be a good buy for my organization. But the reality is tradeoffs never good away. Sometimes people overestimate the value of short term payoff but sometimes people overestimate the value of long term payoffs. The one thing that I think I want to keep here is the clear, simple distinction between "ease" and "simplicity". It's useful even if it might not be entirely, true.